The growth of the Internet has spurred the development of many new programs and services that permit two-way communication between more than two users at the same time. Such communication may be in the form of typed messages, for example in the internet relay chat (IRC) service, or as voice or video transmitted over the network.
Typically such programs and services use the concept of a “channel” to refer to a set of network nodes that are in mutual communication with each other. When a node subscribes to a channel, it receives copies of all of the messages that are transmitted over the channel. Programs and services using channels must therefore, provide a mechanism for distributing packets issuing from one node on the channel to all of the other nodes on the channel.
Two general models have been heretofore applied in this regard. In a peer-to-peer model each node is responsible for sending a copy of each packet to all of the other nodes on the channel. This model is limited, however, by the bandwidth of the node's network connection. For example, if the node was connected to a network by a slow dial-up connection and the node were to transmit to more than a few other nodes on the network, this could produce excessive delays. Delays are especially significant for real time audio or video communication, since they can reduce the quality of the audio or video signal received by other nodes.
An alternative to the peer-to-peer model is the client-server model. In the client server model, data communicated between the various nodes subscribing to a channel (referred to as “clients”) are always directed through a dedicated intermediary computer known as the “server.” In the simplest case, the server acts as a reflector of the data packets received from clients. Each packet received at the server is copied, with a copy transmitted to every other client on the channel.
Alternatively, servers may combine data received from multiple nodes (e.g., by mixing simultaneously received audio signals), and transmit the combined data to the clients on the channel.
Because the server is dedicated to retransmission of data from a large number of clients, its bandwidth may be underutilized if it is not operating at full capacity.